TAX & BENEFITS
By affecting where and how we live, learn, work, consume, and save, America’s tax and benefit systems shape economic opportunity and security. Our work on taxes and benefits emphasizes detailed research-based ideas for raising revenues while improving and establishing new benefit systems that address the changing and complex needs of governments, families, and communities.
Fixing Unemployment Insurance in Response to COVID-19
The novel coronavirus has brought sudden attention to the important role unemployment insurance (UI) system plays in quickly delivering aid to families and stimulus to the economy. This fact sheet, published jointly with The Century Foundation, the Economic Policy Institute, National Employment Law Project, and the National Women’s Law Center, emphasizes the importance of focusing both on immediate changes to help individuals and sustained, structural fixes to fully respond to a crisis of this magnitude and gird the nation for the challenges of a recession and future economic crises.
COVID Response: Getting Cash to Lower-Income Families
The COVID-19 pandemic is devastating to families with low incomes, our communities, and our economy. This fact sheet, published jointly with the National Women’s Law Center, proposes that providing cash transfers to cash-strapped people through EBT is an expedient, cost-effective, and efficient mechanism to help people maintain living standards while quickly boosting our economy.
Measuring Poverty: Why It Matters, & What Should & Should Not Be Done About It
An administrative proposal to artificially lower the poverty line is “technically questionable, economically unwise, and morally troubling” according to Indi Dutta-Gupta’s testimony before the United States House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Reform. Over time, this change would harm millions of people by taking away their access to foundational support programs—including Medicaid and SNAP. His testimony emphasized the proposal’s inevitable harmful impacts, highlighted the proposal’s questionable assumptions about people experiencing poverty, and underscored the need to reform the poverty measurement to improve its accuracy and usefulness for the federal government and the many other stakeholders who rely on it.
Unemployment Insurance & Protections are Vital for Women & Families
Unemployment insurance provides temporary support to unemployed workers who have lost their jobs through no fault of their own. This fact sheet, published jointly with the National Women’s Law Center, National Employment Law Project, and Center for American Progress, shows the importance of unemployment insurance for women and families and suggests changes that would improve the program’s effectiveness for women, their families, and the economy as a whole.
A Tax Code for the Rest of Us: A Framework & Recommendations for Advancing Gender & Racial Equity Through Tax Credits
This report, published jointly with the National Women’s Law Center, offers a new vision for a tax code that works for women, people of color, and low- and moderate-income families. Centuries of racist, sexist policy choices and discrimination have created significant barriers for women and people of color to build the kind of wealth our tax code now rewards. At the same time, insufficient tax revenues—exacerbated by tax breaks for the wealthy and corporations—constrain budgets for programs that help people afford their basic needs. The paper proposes a framework to help policymakers, advocates, and the public evaluate when and how refundable tax credits can advance equity, economic mobility, and opportunity for all.
Melissa Boteach, Amy Matsui, Indivar Dutta-Gupta, Kali Grant, Funke Aderonmu, & Rachel Black
The Paid Family & Medical Leave Opportunity: What Research Tells Us About Designing a Paid Leave Program that Works for All
At some point in our lives, nearly all of us will need to take time away from a job to address a loved one’s or our own serious illness, or to welcome a new child into our family. In this report, GCPI synthesizes research on paid leave and makes recommendations for designing a national paid leave policy that advances equity.
Kali Grant, Cara-Brumfield, Sophie Khan, Funke Aderonmu, & Indivar Dutta-Gupta
Structurally Unsound: The Impact of Using Block Grants to Fund Economic Security Programs
This analysis finds that block grants (characterized by capped amounts of federal funding to states and other entities paired with expansive flexibility for how the funds are spent) are fundamentally ill-equipped to support basic living standards compared to other structures, especially those that meaningfully guarantee access to adequate benefits or services. Specifically, block grants struggle to respond to need, can be less accountable to program goals and to the people who participate in the program, and can exacerbate inequities–especially racial inequities.
Cara Brumfield, Funke Aderonmu, Kali Grant, Aileen Carr, Indivar Dutta-Gupta, Isabella Camacho-Craft, Doug Steiger, & Peter Edelman
Unworkable & Unwise: Conditioning Access to Programs that Ensure a Basic Foundation for Families on Work Requirements
This working paper outlines the ramifications of taking away Medicaid, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), and housing assistance from those who do not document meeting new work and community engagement requirements. The paper underscores how proposals that take away basic assistance from people who don’t meet work requirements are ill-informed, ineffective, inefficient, and inequitable, while alternative policies would produce far better outcomes.
Kali Grant, Funke Aderonmu, Sophie Khan, Kaustubh Chahande, Casey Goldvale, Indivar Dutta-Gupta, Aileen Carr & Doug Steiger
The Difference Between Surviving and Not Surviving: Public Benefits Programs and Sexual Violence Victims’ Economic Security
This new report from the National Resource Center on Domestic Violence along with the Georgetown Center on Poverty & Inequality highlights the urgency of strengthening public benefits policies at the state and federal levels so that they better meet the needs of people facing domestic violence and sexual assault.
Security & Stability: Paid Family and Medical Leave and its Importance to People with Disabilities and their Families
This report by The Arc and GCPI is the first to contribute an overview of the disability angle on paid leave. The findings highlight why a comprehensive, national paid leave program is needed in the U.S. for all workers, including people with disabilities and their families. We also propose that a national paid leave approach should be accessible to all working people, including those with disabilities and their families.
Kali Grant, T.J. Sutcliffe, Indivar Dutta-Gupta, & Casey Goldvale
Strengthening Unemployment Protections in America
In partnership with the Center for American Progress (CAP) and National Employment Law Project (NELP), the center released a report on modernizing unemployment insurance for a 21st century economy and establishing a new Jobseeker’s Allowance.
A Plan to Improve Unemployment Protections in America
This document succinctly summarizes recommendations laid out in the 2016 CAP, GCPI, and NELP report, “Strengthening Unemployment Protections in America.”
Strengthening Unemployment Protections in America: Intro & Summary
Summary of the 2016 CAP, GCPI, and NELP report, “Strengthening Unemployment Protections in America,” on modernizing unemployment insurance for a 21st century economy and establishing a new Jobseeker’s Allowance.
Where States Are and Where They Should Be on Unemployment Protections
CAP, NELP, and GCPI identify the main challenges facing states’ unemployment insurance (UI) programs; provide recent state-level data; and recommend steps that states can take to substantially strengthen their UI programs.
Strengthening Unemployment Protections in America: A Discussion
Rep. Sandy Levin (D-MI) and White House Council of Economic Advisers Chairman Jason Furman explain the need for unemployment insurance (UI) reform. Co-Executive Director Indivar Dutta-Gupta served on a panel of experts to debate UI and the Jobseeker’s Allowance (JSA).
Wall Street Journal article feature: “Should an Unemployed Uber Driver Be Eligible for a “Job Seeker’s Allowance?”
The Georgetown Center on Poverty and Inequality’s report on Job Seeker’s Allowance is referenced in identifying the main challenges facing unemployed Uber drivers eligibility for job seeker’s allowances.
Unemployment Insurance Modernization and Eligibility
Updated, independent analysis from the Urban Institute commissioned by the center, CAP, and NELP—which shows that just three of the center’s proposed reforms would significantly increase the share of newly unemployed workers who are protected by UI.
Comments on Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) Reauthorization
The center submitted comments on the discussion draft of the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) reauthorization bill to the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Ways and Means Subcommittee on Human.
TANF’s not all right
Though TANF seemed promising to some in its first four years, evidence from the last 15 raises alarms and suggests a need for new strategies to help disadvantaged families.
Poverty and Inequality in America: Why We Should Care and What We Should Do
Two-generation approaches to poverty reduction and the Earned Income Tax Credit.
